Sixteen-year-old model meets penniless future rock star almost eight years her senior and is instantly smitten, they eventually marry, have two children, and live happily ever after.Apart from the last bit, that's the ballad of Mary Forsberg Weiland, who has just written a memoir of her life with Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland -- her soon-to-be ex-husband.An awful lot of drug use together condemned their union, as she vividly relates in "Fall to Pieces," whose title comes from a song by her husband's former band Velvet Revolver. Mental illness (her) and incarceration (both) did not help.But the book is no angry tirade from a woman scorned. Indeed, she says it has the blessing of Scott Weiland, who is working on his own autobiography.For all the death and devastation detailed in its pages, the book is surprisingly funny. Even in the depths of junkie despair, she could see the absurdity of taking a limo -- "the douchemobile" -- to one of the couple's countless rehab stints."It's easier to connect with somebody, I think, if there's humor there," she said in a recent interview. "I don't want anybody to think my life is tragic, or I'm playing victim."
In person, Mary Weiland looks like your typical suburban 34-year-old ex-model and mother of two. There is no indication that her face and arms were once covered in scabs or that she injected heroin wherever she could find a spot.
"I never went so far as my neck," she cautions. "I don't think I could have done that."The book traces her early days in a dysfunctional and impoverished southern California family. She started modeling at 14, quit school at 15, and traveled the world making great money.Her future husband had an $8-an-hour job driving models in his beat-up car to their assignments around Los Angeles. She knew upon their first meeting in 1991 that they would be married. Alas, he was dating a woman who would become his first wife, but he deftly strung both women along for many years.
Their relationship was doomed from the start. Scott Weiland's drug use prevented Stone Temple Pilots from building on the promise of its first two hit albums, and he was often in court and on pundits' death-watch lists.His career gets little space in the book. She says she was careful not to involve herself in band matters, and is not completely sure which of his songs are about her.At any rate, she was too busy getting high to analyze the Billboard charts. She was a hard-core heroin user for "a really horrible year" until he was sentenced to a year in jail in 1999 for violating his probation on various drug charges.
The four drugs where more than 50 percent of the deaths were caused by the drug when the drug was found, were heroin (86.9 percent), methadone (73.4 percent), fentanyl (56.4 percent), and oxycodone (56.1 percent), according the The Florida Department of Law Enforcement report released this morning. The information is for the first six months of the year and provided by Florida medical examiners.During that period there were approximately 88,500 deaths in Florida. Of those, 4,199 individuals were found to have died with one or more of the drugs specified in this report in their bodies.Deaths caused by heroin increased by 20.5 percent over the last half of 2008.
The report also indicates that prescription drugs continued to be found more often than illicit drugs in both lethal and non-lethal levels during the first part of this year. Prescription drugs account for 79 percent of all drug occurrences in this report when alcohol is excluded. According to the report, in Fort Myers 19 people who died had lethal levels of oxycodone; 17 had lethal levels of methadone; 16 had lethal levels of alprazolan; seven had lethal levels of morphine; seven had lethal levels of cocaine; four had lethal levels of heroin; four had lethal levels of hydrocodone; and two had lethal levels of propoxyphene.
Professor David Nutt, who was the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, sparked outrage earlier this week after he criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug.It is understood Home Secretary Alan Johnson asked him to consider his position in the wake of the comments, saying he had "no confidence" in him.The charity DrugScope said the development was "extremely serious and concerning".Director of communications, Harry Shapiro, said: "There are few areas of policy as important but at the same time as difficult, complex and emotive as drugs policy. That is why it is vitally important that the Government receives advice that is not only evidence based, objective and robust but that is also public and transparent."However, former Government chief scientific adviser Sir David King said Professor Nutt had "stepped over the line" in criticising a politician.On Friday night, he said that advisers had to maintain the trust of both public and ministers and it was important to do that in a sensitive way."I think that where David has stepped over the line is being openly critical of the politician concerned," he said.
Asya Richardson, through her lawyer, claims she was unaware that the man she knew as a music company impresario used drug money for the down payment on the house just outside Mullica Hill they bought in the summer of 2005.former girlfriend of drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles, wants her money-laundering conviction, linked to the couple's purchase of a luxurious home in South Jersey, overturned.
"Asya Richardson was a naive young woman who fell in love with, and was duped by, Alton Coles, a deceptive, manipulative individual . . . who hid his illegal activities from her and used her as part of his legitimate front to the outside world," Richardson's lawyer, Ellen C. Brotman, argued in a post-trial motion heard today by U.S. District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick.Brotman has asked the judge either to overturn Richardson's conviction or grant her a new trial. Surrick, after an hour-long hearing, said he would take the issue under advisement. Not surprisingly, federal prosecutors argued that the conviction should stand.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Bresnick said that Richardson, 28, knowingly went along with Coles, helping to launder drug proceeds by negotiating the down payment on the $488,000 house with cash transferred from his bank accounts and by lying about her employment and income records."All the evidence established that she knew Coles was a drug dealer and she knew his money was drug money," Bresnick said, describing the house purchase as a "classic money-laundering case."Coles was arrested at the Gloucester County residence, on Dillon's Lane just outside Mullica Hill, in August 2005 as investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tabacco, Firearms and Explosives launched a series of raids that capped a two-year investigation of his $25 million cocaine network. Coles and Richardson had moved into the property two weeks earlier.Richardson was later charged with money-laundering and conspiracy to commit money-laundering. She is the half-sister of former Philadelphia baseketball star Jerome "Pooh" Richardson, who called her hours before the raid to warn that the "feds were coming."Pooh Richardson testified for the prosecution this year at the trial of a former Philadelphia police detective who was convicted of obstruction of justice for leaking him information about the raid.
Aysa Richardson was convicted along with Coles and four others, including a second Coles girlfriend, in March 2008. Coles, 35, was sentenced to life plus 55 years. Richardson has had her sentence delayed pending the outcome of her post-trial motions. She could be sentenced to 78 months. Whatever the outcome, the motions have offered a look at the twisted relationship between Coles and the women he dated while under investigation.Brotman, in papers filed last year, said Coles "used the women in his life as tools of his trade."
Smugglers are loading up mini planes with sacks of marijuana in a bid to evade Moroccan security. Investigations carried out by Moroccan police have exposed dozens of Spaniards believed to be violating their airspace. Some 13 drug planes have already been intercepted this year, while just seven were seized in 2007. Last month, two Spaniards were arrested for undertaking a drug smuggling reconnaissance mission. They were spotted circling over the east of Morocco, in another trademark mini plane.
cocaine trafficking syndicate has been cracked in a series of raids on the Gold Coast, police say.The Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) and Gold Coast police simultaneously executed five search warrants on properties at Carrara, Southport, Burleigh Waters, Surfers Paradise and Molendinar on Thursday morning.Four people were arrested during the raids with charges relating to the trafficking of dangerous drugs, possession of prohibited drugs and possession of firearms laid.
A total of 2.5kg of cocaine was seized during the entire operation, with a street value estimated by the CMC at $750,000.Police also seized $37,650 in cash, steroids, a .357 Magnum firearm and ammunition.The raids signal the closure of a 13-month anti-organised crime operation led by the CMC in partnership with various Queensland and NSW police services.
Royal Dutch Gymnastics Federation handed Yuri van Gelder a one-year suspension for testing positive for cocaine at the Dutch Championships in June, ending his chances to compete at the 2012 Olympics.Van Gelder will be able to return to international competition in the summer of 2010, but International Olympic Committee rules stipulate that athletes who receive any sort of suspension for more than six months are not eligible to compete at the next Olympic Games. …
Gymnastics Examiner – After cocaine suspension, Yuri van Gelder will miss 2012 Olympics
Federal prosecutors say Lambda Iota became a drug house during the 2006 - 2007 school year. Twenty-five-year-old Bent Cardan of California supplied the fraternity president with the cocaine. He'll also be on four years supervised release and pay a $4,000 fine. Cardan's Connecticut supplier is serving a 70-month sentence for drug trafficking. The former fraternity president, 25-year-old Christopher Duncan, is serving two years probation. The Justice Department has moved to seize the frat house.former University of Vermont student will spend six months in jail for supplying drugs to his fraternity's cocaine ring.
Alcohol and cigarettes are more dangerous than illegal drugs such as cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, the government's top drugs advisor said Thursday.Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London called for a new system of classifying drugs to enable the public to better understand the relative harm of legal and illegal substances.
Alcohol would rank as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone, he said in a briefing paper for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London.Tobacco would come ninth on the list and cannabis, LSD and ecstasy "while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively". The ranking is based on physical harm, dependence and social harm.
"No one is suggesting that drugs are not harmful. The critical question is one of scale and degree," said Nutt, the chairman of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.He added: "We have to accept young people like to experiment -- with drugs and other potentially harmful activities -- and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives.
"We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong."Nutt criticised ministers for their decision to upgrade the classification of cannabis in January from class C -- which includes tranquillisers and some painkillers -- to the higher class B alongside amphetamines.The decision, which increases the penalties to a maximum 14 years in jail for dealing and five years for possession, was against scientific advice and came just five years after cannabis had been downgraded from class B to C.Nutt said such policies "distort" and "devalue" research evidence and lead to mixed messages to the public.While he acknowledged that cannabis was "harmful", he said its use does not lead to major health problems. Users faced a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness compared to the risks of smokers contracting lung cancer.Nutt caused controversy earlier this year by saying that taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horseriding, a claim he repeated in his paper.
Mexican navy said the 1,967-pound of cocaine was seized aboard a ship bound for the United States during a weekend raid last week in the Puerto Progreso harbour on the Yucatan Peninsula. Navy inspectors in the port town of Progreso on the southeastern shore of Mexico said they slit open one of the frozen sharks after detecting an anomaly on an X-ray and black bags filled with rectangular cocaine packets spilled out. Drug gangs are coming up with increasingly creative ways of getting drugs into the United States in sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture as Mexico's military cracks down on the cartels moving South American narcotics north.
United Kingdom is the cocaine capital of Europe, with more than a million regular users taking the drug, according to a new report.And one of Scotland's top drug experts said yesterday that given the biggest per capita consumption was north of the Border, the country was probably Europe's capital of the class A substance.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said the UK was Europe's largest cocaine market. But its report said the quality of the drug had declined dramatically in recent years.The report said a crackdown on traffickers had pushed cocaine prices up and led to dealers diluting the drug even more.Some seizures by police revealed that substances being passed off as cocaine that were only 5 per cent pure.The UN found dealers mixing their product with cutting agents such as dental and veterinary anaesthetics, which mimic the effects of cocaine but are much cheaper.There are estimated to be 860,000 cocaine users in England and Wales and about 140,000 in Northern Ireland and Scotland combined. The World Drug Report 2009 revealed that cocaine use had increased dramatically in the UK from the mid-1990s, but remained stable over the past two years.
Data given to the UN by the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency shows that wholesale prices have risen to record levels. The cost of a kilogram of cocaine has increased by 50 per cent – from £30,000 to £45,000 – since 2007.
The report says: "The UK thus continues to be – in absolute numbers – Europe's largest cocaine market, with its second highest cocaine use prevalence rate."
Professor Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University, said he was not surprised at the UN's conclusions."A few years ago I said that in due course cocaine would overtake heroin, and I think that's what we're going to see. Heroin use may have plateaued at quite a high level, but cocaine use has been rising quite dramatically."He added: "Scotland typically is the highest centre of drug consumption in the UK anyway, so it could well be that it is the cocaine capital of Europe."
Families of chaotic drug users are to be given an antidote to keep their relatives alive in the event of a heroin overdose in a pilot scheme to be launched this week.
The drug, naloxone, and training in how to use it, will be given to 950 families in 16 areas of the country, but could be rolled out eventually to a quarter of a million. Experts believe it could save hundreds of lives."It virtually instantaneously reverses the overdose," said Professor John Strang, the director of the national addiction centre, at King's Health Partners in London, one of the new academic health sciences centres. "For many years ambulance crews have had it. This is the logical next step."Surveys of families have revealed that about a quarter have at some time been present when a relative or partner has accidentally overdosed. At the moment, all they can do is ring for an ambulance and hope it arrives in time.Strang's team asked families whether they would like to be taught how to deal with an overdose. "They virtually bit our hands off with enthusiasm," he said. "The results were so obvious you can't believe we haven't spotted this and introduced it years ago."
One in 25 deaths across the world are linked to alcohol consumption, Canadian experts have suggested.Writing in the Lancet, the team from the University of Toronto added that the level of disease linked to drinking affects poorest people the most. Worldwide, average alcohol consumption is around 12 units a week - but in Europe that soars to 21.5. The report authors warn the effect of alcohol disease is similar to that of smoking a decade ago. We face a large and increasing alcohol-attributable burden Dr Jurgen Rehm.The analysis also found that 5% of years lived with disability are attributable to alcohol consumption. The paper says that, although there have been some benefits of moderate drinking in relation to cardiovascular disease, these are far outweighed by the detrimental effects of alcohol on disease and injury. In addition to diseases directly caused by drinking, such as liver disorders, a wide range of other conditions such as mouth and throat cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, depression and stroke are linked to drinking. Drinking patterns do vary around the world, and the researchers point out that most of the adult population - 45% of men and 66% of women - abstain from drinking alcohol for most of them for their life. Across the Americas, average consumption is 17 units per week, while the Middle East was the lowest at 1.3 units per week. For 2004, the latest year for which comparable data are available on a global level, 3.8% of all global deaths (around 1 in 25) were attributable to alcohol. Overall, alcohol-attributable deaths have increased since 2000 mainly because of increases in the number of women drinking. Europe had the highest proportion of deaths related to alcohol, with 1 in 10 deaths directly attributable.
Within Europe, the former Soviet Union countries had the highest proportion at 15%, or around one in seven deaths. This study is a global wake-up call Professor Ian Gilmore, Royal College of Physicians president Globally, men are five times more likely to die from alcohol-related illness than women.
And young people are more likely to have a disease linked to alcohol than older people.
11 inmates at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran were reported injured in a riot involving rival Hispanic gang factions just after noon today, prison officials reported.Around 75 inmates were involved in the incident. Some participants used inmate-manufactured stabbing and slashing weapons in the uprising, which started at around 12:08 p.m., reported prison spokesman Lt. Dave James.No correctional officers were injured, James reported.“Initial intelligence indicates that it [riot] may have been gang-motivated,” said Ken Clark, prison warden. A full investigation is under way, Clark said.Only one of the 11 inmates was injured seriously enough to merit transportation by helicopter to a nearby, unnamed hospital. That inmate is listed in stable condition, James reported.
The other 10 injuries are not considered life-threatening, James reported, and the injured inmates were transported “offsite to area hospitals for medical attention.”
Correctional officers used pepper spray, rubber-baton rounds and two warning shots from a Mini-14 rifle to stop the fighting, James reported. Officers then confiscated 28 improvised weapons from the scene.The facility, a maximum-security prison, is located five miles south of Corcoran, which is in turn located in Kern County southwest of Tulare.
Former Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Jimmy Smith pleaded not guilty to several charges Thursday including possession of cocaine and marijuana.Smith, 40, also pleaded not guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia and driving with a suspended license. A fifth charge, possessing or selling a controlled substance, was dropped.
Smith did not attend the arraignment at Duval County Courthouse. He was represented in court by his attorney, Hank Coxe, who did not comment on the case after the hearing.Smith, who played 10 seasons for Jacksonville, was pulled over April 23 on Interstate 95 in Jacksonville for excessive window tint on his 2009 Mercedes Benz, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.The trooper reported that the inside of the car smelled like burnt marijuana. During a search, the trooper found crack cocaine, marijuana and a business card with powder cocaine residue in the car's center console.Smith retired from the Jaguars in 2006 after playing from 1995 to 2005. He finished with 862 receptions and 12,287 receiving yards and 67 touchdowns. He was a five-time Pro Bowl selection.
16-year-old Orange County High School student has been charged with four counts of drug distribution after a bust at the high school earlier this month.
According to sheriff Mark Amos, school resource officer deputy Garcia Madison noticed a juvenile male student acting suspiciously around his locker.
Deputy Madison asked to see the boy’s hall pass and reported his behavior to school administrators. After school officials were notified, the boy’s locker was searched and investigators found 19 small bags of cocaine, the sheriff said.
Five bags of marijuana were also discovered, as were 17 pills of methedone.
Amos said the cocaine had a value of approximately $100 per bag (totaling $1,900), while the marijuana bags were collectively valued at $100.
The boy was charged with four counts of distribution and taken to the Rappahanock Juvenile Detention Center. Since he is a juvenile, his name could not be released.
German lawmakers have voted to allow the prescription of synthetic heroin to long-term addicts who fail to respond to other treatments.The lower house of parliament approved the measure Thursday.It would apply only to people aged at least 23 who have been addicted for at least five years and undergone two previous, unsuccessful rehabilitation programs.A cross-party group of supporters says pilot programs in seven German cities found that controlled prescription of synthetic heroin, or diamorphine, at approved facilities helped addicts who failed to respond to treatment with methadone.Neighboring Switzerland has long had similar programs. They have been credited with reducing drug-related crime and improving addicts' health.
Cocaine users appear to have less activity in the parts of their brains that monitor behaviors and emotions, a finding that researchers think may make them more vulnerable to addiction to the drug, a new research shows.Using MRI scans, the researchers saw there were issues in these regions of the brain when cocaine users were given a test in which fast, correct answers -- some dealing specifically with drug use -- were rewarded with money. The issues persisted even when the addicts did as well as non-cocaine users on these tests."Whether these brain differences are an underlying cause or a consequence of addiction, the brain regions involved should be considered targets for new kinds of treatments aimed at improving function and self-regulatory control," study author Rita Goldstein, a psychologist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, said in a news release issued by the lab.The study results appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.In the experiment, a group of active cocaine users and demographically similarly but healthy non-users had to push a button that corresponded to a word related to either drug use (e.g., crack, addict) or a neutral term, depending on the scenario. Fast, accurate answers could earn the test subjects up to a maximum of $75 for the entire experiment.Brain imaging showed that the part of the brain that normally becomes active when people monitor their own behavior was far quieter in the cocaine users, especially during the parts of the test in which no monetary rewards were being offered and only neutral terms were being used -- sections considered the least "interesting," according to the researchers. Participants who used cocaine most often during the previous month showed the least activity in this area of the brain.During the section of the test of most interest to the cocaine users -- in which they could earn money for their answers and the terms being used were drug-related -- activity was much lower than their healthy peers in a part of the brain that usually becomes quiet when a person is suppressing emotions. This, the researchers said, suggests the cocaine users were trying to fight off drug cravings to focus on the succeeding at the test."When you really have to suppress a powerful negative emotion, like sadness, anxiety or drug craving, activity in this brain region is supposed to decrease, possibly to tune out the background 'noise' of these emotions so you can focus on the task at hand," said Goldstein, adding that thoughts of past drug use or using more drugs would be the "noise" in this scenario. She went on to note that the cocaine users reported high levels of "task-induced craving" during this portion of the test.
Treatments to improve and strengthen activity in the behavior- and emotion-monitoring portions of the brain -- both found in the anterior cingulate cortex region -- may help addicts regain self-control and decrease impulsive behavior, the researchers concluded.
Communist officials who run Laos, the case of 20-year-old Briton Samantha Orobator - awaiting trial on heroin smuggling charges that could technically still bring her the death penalty - has become an embarrassment that this landlocked South-East Asian backwater could do without. What started out as a straightforward case of a young foreign woman acting with what appears to have been crass stupidity has instead brought the harsh light of international scrutiny on a controlling and secretive regime. The thing that has made Orobator's case a human rights issue is not the manner of her arrest or the conditions in which she is being held in Vientiane's notoriously tough Phonthong Prison. Rather, it is the fact that, eight months after her arrest, she is now five months pregnant. The Laos government refuses to say how she became pregnant but insists stubbornly it is 'impossible' that she might have been raped inside jail or made pregnant by a prison guard, still defying logic in some interviews to claim she has been pregnant since before her arrest. Orobator was made to sign a statement in prison declaring she had not been raped and that the father of her baby was not from Laos shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed in March. A hasty, behind-closed-doors trial now looks likely to take place, possibly within days, after which Laos is expected to hand Orobator over to British embassy officials so that she can be flown home to serve out a prison sentence in the United Kingldom. Little is known about what led Orobator, a Nigerian-born British citizen described by friends as extremely bright with ambitions to become a doctor, to fly to Thailand and then to Laos where she spent five days before her arrest at Wattaya Airport on August 5 last year. To the huge annoyance of government officials, however, far more attention has been devoted to the question of how she got pregnant in prison than why she may have tried to smuggle drugs out of Laos - and it is a question to which they are unwilling or unable to give a satisfactory answer. 'This case is not about babies - it is about heroin,' chief government spokesman Kenthong Nuanthasing said with a tone of rising annoyance. 'She signed a statement to say she was not raped. She did not have intercourse with any man in prison. There is no male close to her during her time in prison. All the prisoners are women and all the guards are female.' Asked who could have fathered the baby, he raised his eyes to the ceiling and said with an impatient laugh: 'Maybe it is a baby from the sky like [the Virgin] Mary.' So why was she made to sign a statement denying she was raped without explaining the truth of her pregnancy? Nuanthasing said: 'We don't want the outside world to blame us (for her pregnancy). That is why we asked her to write a letter to certify that she was not raped and the baby inside her is not a Lao baby.' Nuanthasing made it clear that in order to return home to the Britain, Orobator will be expected to confirm at her trial the statement she signed in prison. 'She will tell the court - otherwise she will stay here,' he said. 'Her court case will be dissolved.'Such a delay could mean Orobator's trial being delayed until after she gives birth and Nuanthasing stressed that the threat of a death sentence could still be invoked as she is only exempt from the death penalty while she is pregnant under Lao law. 'Nobody can guarantee she will not face the firing squad,' he said. The Laos government insists Orobator is being held in an all-female prison. In fact, Phonthong Prison on the outskirts of Vientiane holds male and female prisoners in separate blocks and has both male and female guards living in shabby quarters in the grounds outside. A French former inmate who spent five months in the same prison over a business dispute, said, 'As soon as I read about the case of Samantha Orobator, I knew it must have been a prison guard who got her pregnant. 'Female prisoners are fair game for the guards there. They weren't exactly raped but they were coerced into sex with promises. The guards would tell them they could get them off the death penalty or get them or shorter sentence, or make life inside more comfortable for them.' 'There is no humanity and no compassion in that place. It is a place where you are made to feel as if you are nothing. You are completely cut off from the outside world and you're left begging for the smallest sign of hope, the slightest promise of something better.' Orobator's mother Jane, who lives in Dublin, visited her daughter in the company of government officials and issued a statement afterwards to say her daughter had told her she was not raped and that the father is not a prison guard. That statement, while failing to resolve the nagging questions about Orobator's pregnancy, will have pleased the Vientiane government and may help speed up the process of her trial and deportation. Human rights lawyer Anna Morris, who spent a fortnight in Laos helping her government-appointed Lao lawyer prepare for the case, said: 'We will only know the truth about her pregnancy when she is home in Britain. Our priority is to get her home as soon as possible.'
56-year-old Merrylands woman will face Sydney Central Local Court today charged with importing an estimated $400,000 worth of heroin into Australia.Australian Customs and Border Protection officers at Sydney International Airport stopped the woman and searched her baggage after she arrived on a flight from Vietnam yesterday (Sunday, 24 May 2009).During the baggage examination, officers became suspicious that the woman might be carrying drugs on her person.A subsequent x-ray of the woman's sports shoes revealed anomalies in the base of the shoes.The soles of the shoes were pierced and a white powder was revealed. Presumptive testing of the powder indicated a positive result for heroin. The weight of the powder is approximately 1.4 kilograms. Further forensic testing will confirm the exact weight and purity of the substance.The woman was referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and was charged with importing a marketable quantity of a border-controlled drug contrary to section 307.2 of the Criminal Code Act 1995.The maximum penalty for this offence is 25 years imprisonment and/or a $550,000 fine.
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